​If you know me well, you'd know how much I advocate for family engagement and family support to ensure student success. Ever since I started working for our school system I've organized ESL family nights to provide educational interventions aimed at promoting student success. One reason why I feel strongly about family engagement is that it is something I felt I didn't have when attending school in the US. Another reason was and still is because of the vast demands our schools have of our students and family support to ensure student academic success.

Just last week I thought about starting a blog in Spanish to provide "adequate" support and strategies that Latinxs parents and readers can use to utilize to support students academic success.

Though my intentions are not bad - as a matter fact, I have great intentions to support families - I started thinking about the core of my intentions. You see, I began these family meeting with our ESL families because I questioned or perhaps devalued ESL families' competence to support their children at home. I know this sounds wrong - and it is! However, I need to be honest with myself and the families I serve; and understanding the reason why I do what I do is imperative.

There are two books I read recently that helped me see family engagement through a different lens.

The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon: This is a fantastic story of two teenagers who have nothing in common except their family struggles and huddles because of their immigrant background. Natasha is about to be deported and Daniel, as a first-generation immigrant, struggles to find his own identity in this country.

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez: ​A beautiful Mexican novel where the protagonist seems to be trapped between two worlds. What I find amusing in the novel is how culturally enriching it is for a reader! I found myself smiling page after page because of the connections I made with my own life.

Reading these two novels made me think of a book I read a few years ago while getting my graduate ESL degree. Con Respeto by Guadalupe Váldes is a study that brings to life the everyday worlds of 10 newly arrived immigrant Mexican families. The core of this book and the two novels I mentioned above is to showcase immigrants' family life as a great resource.

As an educator, I see my colleagues and school systems well-meaning intentions in creating and providing educational interventions aimed at promoting school success based on teacher knowledge and based on school context - but not based on parent knowledge.

A New Lens

You see, instead of looking at our families' childrearing styles as a deficit, we can start by changing the way we look at our ESL families' parental knowledge.

Our families have deeply ingrained family values

They bring goals

Life plans

Experiences (practical knowledge)

Cultural knowledge

Sense of identity

Just because our ESL families do not follow the "standard" American family childrearing way, does not mean they are doing it wrong.

From now on I want to make sure my families are being honored for who they are. My teacher knowledge must increase in cultural understanding to be able to embrace and maintain a comfortable environment for my ESL families and my students. The support and tools I will be presenting my ESL parents from now on, will NOT be with the idea of changing who they are or devaluing their family support. My ideas and tools will now be to provide parents with the tools they need to navigate the standard and expectation our schools in the US hold.

My ultimate intention, as well as our ESL families' intention, is to support our students in becoming successful adults, who although they find themselves between two words, may they be empowered to be the best they can be to represent their two worlds.

I would love to know your thoughts on this topic! Please share your comments and lets continue learning together.​

I will never forget when I first started teaching almost 30 years ago and I saw how the families of my students wrote telephone numbers. I couldn't believe how "uneducated" these parents were when they used periods in the phone numbers and didn't group them w/ the (3 digits), 3 digits (hyphen) 4 digits pattern. I thought, "They had seemed literate but I guess they aren't. " The day I found out that cultures/countries around the world wrote phone numbers differently, I had a great "aha moment." I realized that my American experience wasn't "right" or "better", it just was mine. After traveling to 36 countries and having taught students from many nations, I still smile and laugh to myself when I see phone numbers written around the world.

Reply

Emily

3/20/2018 12:10:48 pm

Thank you so much for sharing this! It is so important for us as educator to see our students' and family culture as an asset! Diversity is a beautiful thing...and without looking too far...we can find rich cultural aspects among our students and parents!

Reply

Mary

4/2/2018 06:36:21 am

I would love to see this in practice or examples! Can you direct me to a source or book?